Serial killers are known to be lethal with weapons in their hands, but they can also incite fear with their pens as the following creepy letters have proved. They were written by some of the most notorious and twisted killers in history.

The letters became tools to taunt the police, make demands, hurt the victims’ families, or make chilling confessions. Each one was likely written with the same hand that the killer used to slay his victims.

10 Albert Fish

Creepy serial killer Albert Fish was known as “The Boogeyman” as he preyed on small children and was a suspect in at least five brutal child murders. In 1928, he kidnapped 10-year-old Grace Budd. Then he murdered her and cannibalized her remains at an abandoned house in Westchester County, New York.

Afterward, Fish sent a letter to Budd’s mother describing in horrifying detail how he murdered the young girl. He wrote:

When all was ready, I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked, she began to cry and tried to run downstairs. I grabbed her, and she said she would tell her mama. How she did kick, bite, and scratch. I (then) cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms, cook and eat it.^[1]

The letter became the downfall of Fish as police were able to trace the killer from the unique branding on the envelope he had sent.

9 Donald Harvey

Donald Harvey was a former orderly in hospitals in Ohio and Kentucky during the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, he killed an estimated 37 patients. However, the real victim count is believed to be much higher as Harvey claimed the figure is closer to 70. His killing spree “began by accident” after hooking up a patient to an empty oxygen tank, and then he just couldn’t stop.

The cold-blooded killer never showed any remorse for his crimes. In one interview, he said, “Some of those (patients) might have lasted a few more hours or a few more days, but they were all going to die. I know you think I played God, and I did.”

In a chilling letter that he wrote behind bars, the serial killer joked, “Lord, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill because they pissed me off.”^[2]

8 Dr. H.H. Holmes

Dr. H.H. Holmes was a twisted serial killer who built a “Murder Castle” in Chicago with the intention to kill as many victims as possible. The 100-room building had long, winding corridors that would disorient victims. It also had trapdoors, false walls, and gas chambers. Holmes then sold the cadavers to medical research institutions, and the organs were traded on the black market.

On April 11, 1896, he wrote a full letter of confession to the Philadelphia North American newspaper:

I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. I was born with the “Evil One” standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.^[3]

One month later, he was hanged at Moyamensing Prison for his crimes.

7 Gary Ridgway

Gary Ridgway became known as the “Green River Killer” after he confessed to murdering 48 sex workers and runaways in the state of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s. Ridgway said, “I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”

In 1984, he wrote a letter about the murders titled “what you need to know about the green river man” and sent it to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In disturbing detail, the killer wrote about necrophilia and cutting off the fingernails of victims before signing off as “callmefred.”^[4]

Police claimed that it was a “brazen attempt to throw off investigators.” At the time, they did not follow up on this key evidence. Ridgway’s game of playing cat and mouse with the police finally came to an end in 2001 when DNA evidence connected him to the murders. He was spared the death penalty as part of a plea bargain where he disclosed the locations of the missing bodies. His plea bargain raised his murder convictions to 49.

6 Ian Brady

The “Moors Murderers,” Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, killed five children between 10 and 17 years old in the early 1960s. Three graves were discovered on Saddleworth Moor in Manchester, England, but the killers never revealed the final resting place of their other victims. Hindley claimed that she was under Brady’s spell and that she took part in the crimes against her will. However, he tells a different story.

In one letter that he wrote from prison to a journalist, Brady explained:

Hindley has crafted a Victorian melodrama in which she portrays herself as being forced to murder serially. We both habitually carried revolvers and went for target practice on the moors. If I were mistreating her, she could have shot me dead at any time. For 30 years, she said she was acting out of love for me; now she maintains she killed because she hated me—a completely irrational hypothesis. In character, she is essentially a chameleon, adopting whatever camouflage will suit and voicing whatever she believes the individual wishes to hear. She can kill, both in cold blood or in a rage.^[5]

5 The Axeman Of New Orleans

The Axeman of New Orleans is an unidentified serial killer who butchered six victims and injured 12 others in 1918 and 1919. A letter believed to be from the killer was published in newspapers and claimed that he would spare anyone who was playing jazz music.

Dated March 13, 1919, the anonymous killer wrote:

I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it out on that specific Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.^[6]

Then the murders suddenly stopped as quickly as they had started. The crimes remain unsolved to this day.

4 The Beltway Snipers

Over a three-week span in 2002, the “Beltway snipers” killed 10 people in the states of Maryland and Virginia. (Another seven individuals were murdered elsewhere.) John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo shot each victim with a single bullet fired from a distance. Then the killers vanished.

They wrote down their demands in a three-page letter with a cover note that read, “For you, Mr. Police. Call Me God.” They demanded $10 million in “unlimited withdrawals” or the lives of children in the area would be threatened. The letter was left pinned to a tree outside a restaurant where the snipers had shot and wounded a man who was out to dinner with his wife.

They were eventually caught when one of the snipers mentioned an unsolved murder in Montgomery, Alabama, in a traced phone call. Authorities were able to link both of the murders with fingerprints and make an arrest. Muhammad was put to death by lethal injection, and Malvo received a life sentence.^[7]

3 Dennis Rader

Dennis Rader gave himself the title “BTK” after his chilling murder method of “Bind, Torture, Kill.” Between 1974 and 1991, Rader killed 10 people in Sedgwick County, Kansas, with gaps in between to dedicate more of his time to being a family man. Rader believed that he could outwit the police, so he sent them taunting letters.

One of his poorly written letters read:

When this monster enter my brain, I will never know. But, it here to stay. Society can be thankfull (sic) that there are ways for people like me to relieve myself at time by daydreams of some victim being torture and being mine. It a big compicated (sic) game my friend of the monster play putting victims number down, follow them, checking up on them waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting. Maybe you can stop him. I can’t. He has areadly (sic) chosen his next victim.^[8]

He signed it, “Yours, Truly Guiltily, BTK.”

He was caught after he upgraded his technology and sent his letters on a floppy disc, which was immediately traced to him.

2 Jack The Ripper

The terrifying case of Jack the Ripper still haunts London today. In 1888, the chilling serial killer targeted impoverished areas around Whitechapel. The bodies of his victims were discovered with their throats cut open and with abdominal mutilations.

On September 27, 1888, the Central News Agency received this letter (which they believed was a hoax):

The next job I do, I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly, wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.^[9]

Three days later, a double murder took place. True to his word, the ripper cut a portion of the earlobe off his victims. The case has never been solved.

1 The Zodiac Killer

In the late 1960s, the Zodiac Killer targeted four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco. Five victims were killed during his reign of terror. He sent several letters, including four cryptograms, to the local Bay Area press. It’s believed that his true identity will be revealed if the ciphers can be decoded.

Only one of the ciphers has ever been solved.^[10] Schoolteacher Donald Harden and his wife, Bettye, cracked the code which reads:

I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE ANAMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAE WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE AND ALL THEI HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOI DOWN OR ATOP MY COLLECTIOG OF SLAVES FOR MY AFTERLIFE. EBEORIETEMETHHPITI.

The unsolved ciphers still frustrate the FBI.

Cheish Merryweather is a true crime fan and an oddities fanatic. Can either be found at house parties telling everyone that Charles Manson was only 157 centimeters (5’2″) or at home reading true crime magazines. Twitter: @thecheish

Serial killers are hardly a phenomenon confined to the 20th and 21st centuries. Many periods of history have been witness to serial murders of their own. The Old West was a well-known time of lawlessness, so it’s no surprise that there were many active serial killers stalking the prairies and deserts of North America.

Whether they murdered for profit, pleasure, or both, the impact on the victims, their families, and the community was always the same. The ruthlessness of the following crimes may shock you, so mentally prepare yourself for the brutality to come.

10 The Bloody Benders

The Bloody Benders were a family who moved into Osage Township, Kansas, in late 1870. This family of four would end up killing as many as 21 people.^[1] The West could be a dangerous and violent place, so a safe area of peace and refuge would have been a cherished thing. This is how the Benders lured their victims in. They would play the part of a loving family with a cozy inn for weary travelers to stay, and when their guests had their backs turned, the Benders would bash in their skulls, steal their money, and bury them out back.

Several people who stopped at the Benders’ place told a tale about how they had almost become the serial-killing family’s victims. They said the Benders had a sheet hung up in a room that the men would hide behind while the women would try to get the guests to sit in a very specific chair facing away from the sheet. When they refused to sit, Ma Bender became enraged, and then the male Benders stepped out from behind the sheet. The men quickly left, likely avoiding becoming the Benders’ next victims.

The Benders themselves ultimately escaped before they could be captured, and they were never found.

9 Stephen Dee Richards

Stephen Dee Richards has been called the Old West’s Ted Bundy, but in his day and age, he was dubbed the Nebraska Fiend.^[2] He was a charming and well-spoken man. Unlike Bundy, Stephen seems to have had no preferred type of victim when it came to killing. He murdered a young man he had a disagreement with, and he killed a mother and her three children with an ax. He said of killing the family that it was no different to him than killing jackrabbits.

Stephen ultimately murdered nine people in total. He did not escape justice, however, and was hanged in 1879.

8 Charles Kennedy

Charles Kennedy was a mountain man who lived near Eagle Nest, New Mexico. One day in 1870, Charles’s wife came running into a saloon crying. Incredibly upset, she confessed to the townspeople what she had witnessed. Her husband had been luring travelers into their home to kill them and steal their money. The very night before, Charles had done just that, but his son was in the room speaking to the traveler. The traveler asked if there were many “Indians” around, and the son responded, “Can’t you smell the one Papa put under the floor?”^[3] Charles flew into a rage, murdered both the traveler and his own son, and then locked his wife in the house. The woman waited for her husband to pass out after getting drunk and then escaped out a chimney.

The men at the saloon went after Charles along with a man named Clay Allison, who was known to be good with a gun. Charles was brought to the courthouse, but after the townspeople heard rumors that his lawyer was going to get him off, they took matters into their own hands. A group of several men took Charles from his jail cell, tied a noose around his neck, and dragged him behind a horse until he was strangled to death.

7 Boone Helm

Levi Boone Helm was a mountain man and gunslinger, but he is best known as the Kentucky Cannibal. Boone was part of a gang that would steal and murder all over Oregon and Idaho, but by the time Boone had joined this group, he had already killed many men.

One day, Boone and some others got caught up in a snowstorm. The animals and all the men perished, except for Boone and a man named Burton. They had discovered an empty cabin, but it had no food. According to Boone, he had started trying to light a fire when he heard a gunshot and discovered that his companion had killed himself. It did not take long for Boone to decide to cannibalize the body.^[4]

Boone would make it out of the winter storm and return to his life of crime, but he wouldn’t evade justice forever. He and the rest of his gang were eventually arrested and brought before a court. Boone tried to defend himself, but it was all in vain. He was convicted and hanged.

6 The Servant Girl Annihilator

The Servant Girl Annihilator was a serial killer who murdered seven women and one man in Austin, Texas, in 1884 and 1885. He also maimed six other women and two men. The murders were thought to have been partially motivated by racism because many of the victims were black. The murderer would typically attack his victims while they were asleep before dragging the bodies outside.^[5]

The police were given conflicting reports on what the killer looked like, with differing accounts as to whether he was white or black. As many as 400 men were arrested in connection to the crimes, but none were convicted. To this day, there is speculation as to who the Servant Girl Annihilator was, with theories as mundane and reasonable as Nathan Elgin, a cook who was shot by the police while attacking a woman around the time the killings stopped, to Jack the Ripper, because of course.

5 James Miller

James Miller, aka Miller the Killer, was a murderer-for-hire. He was also called Deacon Miller because he would regularly attend church and seemingly had no vices; he didn’t smoke or drink. Despite his pious behavior in public, James obviously had a darker professional and private life. He would often kill people he didn’t like. When his sister was engaged to be married to a man whom James despised, the fiance was mysteriously murdered. James are arrested and convicted of the murder, but the charges were overturned on a technicality. James would eventually turn his passion for killing into a profession, charging large sums of money to have someone executed.

Because of James’s pious outward appearance, no one in his community had any idea what he was capable of. He actually had a brief stint as a lawman. James’s downfall ultimately came when he assassinated a former deputy US marshal. This caused an enraged mob to lynch him. Right before he was hanged, he reportedly shouted, “Let her rip!”^[6]

4 John Wesley Hardin

John Wesley Hardin was the last man you’d think would become a vicious outlaw. Being born to and raised by a preacher didn’t stop John from getting into trouble at an early age. His first kill was at the age of 15, and he would not stop after just one man. It’s possible he killed up to 42 men. His temper was well-known, and it was common for him to murder anyone who bothered him. John didn’t just kill troublesome people, of course; in his time, it was common to kill people and then rob them.

John was eventually imprisoned for his crimes, a rarity for someone on this list, but he didn’t evade vigilante justice altogether. After spending 17 years in prison, John lived in El Paso, Texas. As you can imagine, with that temper and all, he was not well-liked. One day, John got into a heated argument with a lawman named John Selman. Not long afterward, Selman walked up behind John and shot him in the head.^[7]

3 Bill Longley

Bill Longley was a psychopath through and through. By the time he was 20, he had already killed several times. Bill was known to murder anyone who irritated him, and he was an avowed racist, so black people and Mexicans were frequent targets of his cruelty. Bill and some of his friends once happened upon three black men named Green Evans, Pryer Evans, and Ned, who were freed slaves and were traveling to visit friends. Bill and his cohorts held the men up at gunpoint. The poor men panicked and tried to escape, but Green Evans was shot and killed.

Bill’s final murder would be that of his childhood friend Wilson Anderson. Bill was already a wanted man, but this put new bounties on his head, and vigilante groups tried to capture him. Bill would eventually be caught and convicted. Longley was hanged but did not receive a quick and painless death. The rope was loose at first, so Bill’s knees hit the ground. Then, when the rope was pulled taut, he slowly suffocated. It would take 11 minutes of strangulation before he finally died.^[8]

2 Liver-Eating Johnson

John Jeremiah Garrison Johnston was a mountain man who was dubbed Liver-Eating Johnson. John’s life is shrouded in legend, the biggest of which involves how he earned his nickname. According to the tales, after his wife was killed by a Crow Native American, John had a vendetta against the entire tribe. They say that he killed over 300 Crow natives, scalped them, and ate their livers. This was a great insult to the Crow because they believed that the liver was vital to go on to the afterlife.

The truth, though, was that John probably never ate anyone’s liver; the rumor that he did so most likely started as a dark joke he told some people and went wild from there.^[9] John would eventually make peace with the Crow despite butchering scores of them, or so the legend goes. In actuality, the Crow were thought to be very friendly with American frontiersmen. In this case, it is hard to distinguish fact from fiction.

John Jeremiah Garrison Johnston died in 1900, penniless and without any family to speak of.

1 Delphine LaLaurie

Delphine LaLaurie was a wealthy socialite who lived in New Orleans and went down in history for her monstrous treatment of slaves. Her torture of her slaves was discovered in 1834, when one elderly slave tried to burn down Delphine’s home. She was trying to kill herself in order to escape LaLaurie’s brutal punishments.

After being brought to the house by the fire, authorities also found the attic, where several slaves were in various states of torture. Previously, Delphine had actually whipped a little girl off a roof, and the police had forced her to sell her slaves. This was all for naught, as Delphine had her relatives buy her slaves for her and then sneak them back into her house.

In a shocking act of compassion for slaves for the time period, Delphine’s neighbors actually formed a mob and drove her and her family from their home.^[10]

It appears you are never too young to start killing. While most kids choose sports, art, or music as hobbies, some decided to exercise with murder. Here are ten killers and the age they started down a dark path.

10 Harvey Miguel Robinson, 17 Years Old

Harvey Miguel Robinson is from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and is one of the youngest serial killers on death row. He was 17 when he first committed murder in August 1992. Police caught Robinson on July 31st, 1993, after he raped but failed to kill Denise Cali on June 28th, 1993. Robinson returned to Cali’s house, where police were waiting. Since Cali bit Robinson’s arm during the initial attack before fleeing, police could match the bite mark to Robinson and convict him. Allentown police also connected Robinson to the rape and murder of the following three women:

• Joan Burghardt: 29-year-old nurse’s aide (August 1992)
• Charlotte Schmoyer: 15-year-old newspaper carrier for The Morning Call (June 1993)
• Jessica Jean Fortney: 47-year-old grandmother (July 1993)

The courts convicted Robinson of raping and killing Schmoyer, Burghardt, and Fortney on November 10th, 1994, and sentenced him to death for all three cases. In April 1995, the courts also convicted him of raping a 5-year-old girl and sentenced him to an additional 57 years in prison. In April 2006, Robinson got a resentence to life imprisonment for the Joan Burghardt murder because he was only 17 at the time. He also exchanged his appeal rights for a life sentence in the Schmoyer case on December 14th, 2012. As of 2020, he still has the death penalty for the Fortney murder.

9 Craig Price, 13 Years Old

Craig Chandler Price is from Warwick, Rhode Island, and currently imprisoned at the Florida State Prison in Raiford. Craig was 13 years old when he killed 27-year-old Rebecca Spencer, a neighbor who lived two doors down from his house. Price stabbed Spencer 58 times. He wasn’t a suspect for Spencer’s murder but confessed to the crime when police caught him two years later for killing three additional neighbors while high on drugs in 1989. The victims were 39-year-old Joan Heaton and her daughters Jennifer and Melissa, who were 10 and 8. He stabbed them over 30 times with wounds so deep the handles broke off the knives. He also crushed Melissa’s skull. Price did not show signs of remorse for killing the Heatons, even imitating the sounds of their death cries. 

Due to his age, Price couldn’t face trial and was committed to a juvenile correctional institution called the Rhode Island Training School. However, in 2004, Price transferred from Rhode Island to Florida because of his violent tendencies. He was also denied parole in March 2009. Although the courts set his release date for May 2020, they sentenced him to an additional 25 years on January 18th, 2019, for stabbing an inmate Joshua Davis on April 4th, 2017. 

8 Jasmine Richardson, 12 Years Old

Jasmine Richardson and her Romeo, Jeremy Steinke, flipped the classic story of forbidden love. Instead of committing suicide, they murdered anyone that got in their way. At 12 years old, Richardson started dating 27-year-old Steinke after meeting at a punk rock show in 2006. However, her parents aggressively disapproved of their relationship due to the age gap. On April 23rd, 2006, the couple decided to go on a murder spree by killing Richardson’s parents, Marc and Debra, and her 8-year-old brother Jacob. A 6-year-old neighbor found the bodies in the Richardson’s home at Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. 

Steinke admitted to police that Richardson wanted her parents dead so she could be free from them. He even told her father, “It’s what your daughter wanted,” as Marc died from stab wounds. Jasmine Richardson was the one to stab her brother in the neck. On July 9th, 2007, the court convicted Richardson and Steinke each with three counts of first-degree murder. Richardson was one of the youngest people to be convicted of multiple first-degree murders in Canada. However, convicts under fourteen in Canada cannot receive more than a ten-year sentence. In contrast, Steinke received three life sentences on December 15th, 2008. 

Richardson started attending classes at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, for the final years of her sentence and was released into a psychiatric hospital in 2011. With evidence of rehabilitation, Richardson completed her sentence in May 2016. 

7 Mary Bell, 10 Years Old

With an impoverished life and a mother who tried to kill her multiple times, Mary Bell decided to take a dark path before her 11th birthday. On May 25th, 1968, Bell took 4-year-old Martin Brown to a deserted house in Newcastle, England, and strangled him to death. Although she later left notes confessing to the murder, the police didn’t take her seriously. Two months later, she killed again. Bell left the body of 3-year-old Bryan Howe in the same area she left Brown’s. This time, the police arrested her.

In December 1968, the courts convicted her of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. The court-appointed psychiatrist described her as having classic symptoms of psychopathy. Police reports indicated she had carved an “M” into Howe’s body and mutilated him, including using scissors to cut off his genitals. Bell spent 12 years in prison. She was released in 1980 when she was 23. She now lives with her daughter with a new identity. 

6 Joseph Mcvay, 10 Years Old

On January 2nd, 2011, at their home in Holmes County, Ohio, Joseph McVay, age 10, shot his mother, Deborah McVay, age 46. According to his sister, Shawna McVay, Joseph was tired of fighting with his mom and used a 22 caliber rifle to shoot her. He then went to his neighbor’s house, called 911, and told the dispatcher, “I shot my mom. I shot her with a gun.” Joseph pleaded guilty to one count of murder the same day of the incident. The court found him incompetent for trial until early 2013, when they sentenced him in juvenile court at 13. 

The official motive was Joseph was arguing with his mom over chores. To avoid bringing in firewood from outside, he fired a shot into his mother’s head instead. However, there is the question as to how long the intent to kill may have been brewing. Interviews with family members and school administrators indicated his mother physically, emotionally, and verbally abused him. Joseph also showed signs of anger and aggression before the murder, like in September 2007, when he swatted a school administrator with a dustpan. 

5 Cayetano Santos Godino, 9 Years Old

Cayetano Santos Godino, also known as El Petiso Orejudo or Macrotous Runt, was a serial killer and arsonist from Buenos Aires, Argentina that started down his killing path young. He beat a 2-year-old, left him in a ditch when he was 7, and beat another kid with a stone when he was 8. Due to his young age, the police released him from jail time. But, these beatings were just the beginning. A year later, in 1906, Godino killed 3-year-old Maria Rosa Face and got away with it.

It wasn’t until he confessed to police years later that he strangled her and buried her alive in a ditch did anyone connect him to the crime. In 1912, before he turned 16 in October, Godino started a spree of destruction. His attacks include:

• Arturo Laurona: 13-year-old, killed and left in an abandoned house (January 26th)
• Reyna Vainicoff: 5-year-old killed by setting fire to her dress (March 7th)
• Roberto Russo: 8-year-old choked but survived (November 8th)
• Carolina Neolener: 2-year-old kidnapped but rescued (November 20th)

On December 4th, 1912, police finally arrested and jailed Godino after he killed Jesualdo Giordano. Godino took Giordano to a country house, tried to choke him, beat him, and eventually killed him by hammering a nail into the side of his skull.

Following this incident, Godino entered a youth detention center on January 4th, 1913. Medical reports declared him insane after he tried to kill some inmates. The judge ended the case and ordered him to stay in the center. An appeal approved him to move back to jail on November 20th, 1915. Godino later transferred to Ushuaia Penitentiary on March 28th, 1923, where he died in 1944. 

4 Christian Romero, 8 Years Old

On November 5th, 2008, Christian Romero from St. Johns, Arizona, committed a double murder at eight years old. He was accused of killing his father, Vincent Romero, with a 22-caliber rifle before shooting a family friend who rented a room at their house, Tim Romans.

Romero pleaded guilty to one count of negligent homicide in 2009 for killing Romans, but the court never charged him with his father’s death, despite the suspicion that it was premeditated. Prosecution attorney Michael Whiting explained that his father’s killing was dropped because it was in Romero’s best interest the court didn’t force him to acknowledge the killing. 

Romero lived under the supervision of the Apache County Superior Court in a secure, supervised group home. His probation terms included receiving treatment and mental health evaluations instead of punishment. In 2015, 15-year-old Romero was recommended by an Apache County probation officer, Julie Nicholson, to attend public school. 

3 Carroll Cole, 8 Years Old

Born on May 9th, 1938, in Sioux City, Iowa, Carroll Cole was a serial killer who started killing at the young age of 8. After his family moved to Richmond, California, Cole was emotionally abused by his younger sister at home and often teased at school. In 1947, he retaliated against a classmate, 8-year-old Duane, by drowning him in a lake. Although at the time, authorities ruled it as an accident, Cole confessed years later in an autobiography that it was intentional.

As a teenager, Cole committed several petty crimes, was discharged from the Army for bad conduct, and in 1960 attacked two couples in parked cars on lover’s lane. He attempted to strangle numerous women in the years following, including an 11-year-old girl in Missouri. This crime led him to a five-year prison sentence. 

Since his first murder at 8, Cole didn’t successfully kill again until May 7th, 1971, when he strangled Essie L. Buck to death. However, it wasn’t until November 1980 that police arrested Cole for fatally strangling three women in Texas. The courts convicted Cole of the three murders on April 9th, 1981, and he was executed by lethal injection on December 6th, 1985. Before his death, Cole claimed he had gotten away with the murders of at least fourteen other women in the nine years prior to 1980.

2 Amarjeet Sada, 7 Years Old

Amardeep Sada, also known as Amarjeet, not only started killing young but had some of the youngest victims. His three murders in Bihar, India, were all babies under one year old. When he was 7, he killed his 8-month-old sister and 6-month-old cousin but got away because his parents helped cover up the crime. Some villagers also knew of the killings but did not report it because they considered it a family matter. A year later, in January 2007, he killed Kushboo, a neighbor’s 6-month-old daughter. Police finally caught him. Sada happily confessed to taking Kushboo from daycare, strangling her, and hitting her on the head with a stone. He became known as India’s youngest serial killer. 

The Bhagwanpur police in the Musahari village said Sada smiled a lot and spoke very little when being questioned about his crimes. Psychoanalyst, Shamshad Hussain, said Sada was a sadist who derives pleasure from inflicting injuries. However, a former psychology professor of Patna University said he did not have a sense of right or wrong. Superintendent Amit Lodha declared the case a psychiatric one, and Sada needed to be evaluated by professionals. Finding he had a chemical imbalance and needed help, Sada ended up staying in a children’s home until he turned 18. 

1 Carl Newton Mahan, 6 Years Old

While there could be younger murderers that got away with their crimes, Carl Newton Mahan has claimed the title of the youngest known killer in American history. He became Kentucky’s youngest murder defendant after using a 12-gauge shotgun to kill a friend on May 18th, 1929. Mahan fought with 8-year-old Cecil Van Hoose in their impoverished coal-mine town over who could sell a scrap of iron. Hoose ended up slapping Mahan in the face with the iron scrap.

Mahan ran home to retrieve his father’s shotgun before declaring to Hoose, “I’m going to shoot you!” and pulled the trigger. Less than a week later, Mahan was on trial for the murder, where he often lay on the defense counsel’s table or slept. A jury convicted Mahan of manslaughter, and the judge sentenced him to 15 years of reform school. 

There was contradicting public opinion on whether manslaughter was too harsh or not enough as a conviction. A Circuit Court judge overturned the conviction, saying a county judge should decide juvenile cases. Finally, Kentucky’s attorney general became responsible for making the final decision and announced he would take no action against Mahan. Mahan was allowed to remain with his parents.

One would think that serial killers are a uniquely-American thing, thanks to ‘true crime’ podcasts and TV shows that tend to overstate that phenomenon. Look at some of the most gruesome serial killers of the past few centuries or so, however, and you’d realize that serial murder is a shockingly-common occurrence throughout the world, from countries like Indonesia to China to Russia to Japan.

10. Ahmed Suradji, Indonesia

Ahmad Suradji, also known by nicknames like Nasib Kelewang or just ‘Datuk’, was an Indonesian cattle breeder who later turned into one of the country’s most notorious serial killers. Born on January 10, 1949, he admitted to the brutal murder of 42 girls and women over an 11-year period. His victims, aged 11 to 30, were usually strangled with a cable after being buried up to their waist in the ground, all as a part of a ritual he believed would grant him enhanced powers. 

Suradji was arrested on May 2, 1997, after bodies were discovered near his home in Medan, North Sumatra. He claimed that he had received instructions from the ghost of his deceased father, urging him to kill 70 women and drink their saliva to become a mystic healer. He also practiced as a sorcerer – or ‘dukun’ in local culture – leading to a number of women seeking his advice on matters like beauty and wealth. 

Suradji’s trial began on December 11, 1997, resulting in a guilty verdict on April 27, 1998. He was sentenced to death by firing squad for his crimes and executed on July 10, 2008. 

9. Mikhail Popkov, Russia

Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov was a Russian police officer and convicted serial killer responsible for a series of brutal crimes in Siberia between 1992 and 2010. Born in March, 1964, in the Angarsk region of the Soviet Union, Popkov worked as a security guard and later as a police officer in Irkutsk. 

Popkov, also known as ‘The Werewolf’ and the ‘Angarsk Maniac’, would lure his victims by offering them a free ride in his police car while in uniform. Once alone, he would sexually assault and brutally kill them using various weapons like knives, axes, and baseball bats, with the bodies often being mutilated beyond recognition. Despite widespread suspicions and even testimonies from surviving victims, Popkov eluded capture for over two decades.

A breakthrough came in 2012, when random DNA tests were conducted on 3,500 police officers including Popkov. The evidence decisively linked him to the crimes, ultimately leading to his arrest in 2015, when he was convicted of 22 murders and sentenced to life in prison. Popkov confessed to an additional 59 killings two years later, bringing his total victim count to at least 81. 

8. Andrei Chikatilo, Russian SFSR

Andrei Chikatilo, also known as ‘The Butcher of Rostov’ and the ‘Rostov Ripper’, was an infamous Soviet-era serial killer who operated in the Rostov region of the Russian SFSR between 1978 and 1990. Born in Ukraine in 1936, Chikatilo originally served in the Soviet Army and worked as a teacher. His murder spree began in 1978, when he abducted and murdered a nine-year-old girl, followed by multiple rapes and murders of women, children, and prostitutes across the region.

Despite numerous complaints and rumors about his behavior from students and other peers, Chikatilo evaded conviction for many years, largely due to the deteriorating social and economic conditions of the Soviet Union during that time. Ultimately, an intensive police investigation led to his arrest in 1990. Chikatilo was convicted of 53 instances of murder in 1992, and executed for his crimes in February 1994.

7. Yang Xinhai, China

Yang Xinhai, also known as ‘The Monster Killer’, was born in July, 1968, in the Henan province of China. Growing up in poverty as the youngest of four children in his family, he dropped out of school and began working as a laborer, though his criminal activities soon landed him in the re-education labor camps for theft and robbery. 

From 1999 to 2003, Yang committed a series of crimes including the murder and rape of at least 67 people and 23 women across several provinces of China, respectively. His modus operandi involved breaking into victims’ homes at night and killing the entire family with improvised weapons. Yang managed to evade capture by planning his attacks carefully, as he was adept at changing his appearance at will and getting rid of the evidence. 

All that would come to an end in November, 2003, when he was arrested during a routine inspection and subsequently linked to the crimes through DNA evidence. For his horrible crimes, Yang Xinhai was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on February 14, 2004. 

6. Alexander Pichushkin, Russia

Also sometimes called ‘The Chessboard Killer’, Alexander Pichushkin was another notorious serial murderer to emerge from the chaos of the final years of the Soviet Union. Born in April, 1974, in Moscow, Pichushkin suffered a serious head injury as a child and spent time in an institute for the disabled. He became an exceptional chess player, often playing and winning against much older opponents in Bitsa Park. The death of his beloved grandfather and his subsequent drinking habit, however, led to a drastic change in his personality.

During the investigation, Pichushkin claimed that he murdered his first victim in 1992. He usually targeted homeless men, luring them with offers of vodka before brutally attacking them from behind with a melee weapon, usually a hammer. He left their bodies in Bitsa Park or drowned them in a sewer, making the exact number of his victims unknown. 

Pichushkin was arrested on June 16, 2006, at the age of 33, before being convicted of 48 murders and three attempted murders in 2007. Due to the suspension of the death penalty in Russia by that time, Pichushkin received a life sentence for his crimes.

5. Anatoly Onoprienko, Soviet Ukraine

Anatoly Yuriyovych Onoprienko – also known as ‘The Beast of Ukraine’, ‘The Terminator’, and ‘Citizen O’, among many other media-nicknames – was a Soviet Ukrainian serial killer who confessed to the murders of 52 people. He was active between 1989 to 1995, and his modus operandi involved selecting isolated houses, creating a commotion to gain the occupants’ attention, and then systematically killing them. He typically started with the adult male, followed by the spouse, and finally the children. To cover his tracks, Onoprienko often set the buildings on fire and didn’t hesitate to eliminate any additional witnesses that could potentially implicate him.

After his arrest on April 16, 1996, Onoprienko was found in possession of the murder weapons used during the crimes, along with several souvenirs taken from his victims. Initially confessing to eight killings, Anatoly Onoprienko later admitted to a total of 52 victims. For these murders, Onoprienko was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

4. Martha Rendell, Australia

Martha Rendell was convicted and hanged in 1909 for committing one of the most horrifying crimes uncovered by the Western Australia Police. Married to one Thomas Morris, she murdered three of his children by swabbing their throats with spirits of salts. Although the children suffered slow and agonizing deaths, the crimes went unnoticed until one of the siblings, George Morris, reported his stepmother’s actions to the authorities.

The investigation was delayed by the difficulty in determining the effects of spirits of salts on the victims, even if suspicions were raised when it was discovered that she had purchased large quantities of the toxic substance during the children’s supposed illnesses. It was only when the autopsies proved the presence of a poisonous substance that caused inflammation and hemorrhaging of the children’s bowels that she was finally convicted. Martha Rendell was hanged on October 6, 1909, in Fremantle Prison. 

3. Bruno Lüdke, Germany

Bruno Lüdke was a German murderer who’s still remembered as one of Europe’s most prolific serial killers. Born in 1909, he’s believed to have committed more than 80 murders, though the real number still remains unknown. His killing spree also involved several sadistic sexual crimes, lasting for about 15 years beginning in 1928.

Most of Lüdke’s crimes occurred during the chaotic interwar period in Germany, and he usually preyed on victims whose disappearance would not be immediately noticed. He was classified as mentally defective by the Nazi government, resulting in his forced sterilization under the eugenics policies prevalent at the time. Lüdke was arrested in 1943 on a murder charge and subsequently sent to a Vienna hospital, where he was the subject of a Nazi medical experiment that led to his death in 1944.

2. Mariam Soulakiotis, Greece

Sometimes called ‘Mother Rasputin’ in popular Greek culture, Mariam Soulakiotis was a Greek Orthodox abbess and convicted serial killer active between 1939 and 1951. Convicted for committing a series of murders in the Peukovounogiatrissas Monastery near Keratea, Greece, Soulakiotis usually lured wealthy women into the convent and tortured them until they were forced to donate their wealth. She embezzled the money and, in a few cases, ended up murdering some of her victims. 

For her crimes, Soulakiotis was indicted in February 1951 and charged with homicide, fraud, forgery, blackmail, and torture. She would be sentenced to life in prison in 1952, where she died in 1954, even if she never officially confessed to her crimes.

1. Luis Garavito, Colombia

Luis Garavito is a Colombian serial killer born in January 1957, in Génova, Colombia. He’s still remembered for his brutal crimes committed during the 1990s, largely due to his troubled childhood that included persistent abuse from his father and a neighbor. He left his family at the age of 16 and became a farmhand, struggling with alcoholism and developing a morbid attraction towards children before long.

Garavito’s killing spree lasted for about seven years, and his victims were mostly young boys from impoverished backgrounds, whom he lured with promises of money or drinks while disguising himself as a monk or priest. He was finally arrested in 1999 for sexually assaulting a young boy, leading to his confession to the murders of about 140 boys. He was convicted for a total of 189 murders, however, resulting in a sentence of 835 years.

Ever since Jaws hit theaters, folks have feared stepping into the water for fear of becoming a giant fish’s snack. The book and films paint sharks as evil killing machines, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Sharks rarely harm people, and they don’t ride around in tornadoes as much as people think. Still, there are tons of misconceptions about nature’s most efficient killing machines, and these ten are easily the most widespread.

10 Facts That Will Change How You View Sharks

10 Sharks Are Nature’s Most Efficient Killing Machines

Don’t let the title fool you; sharks arent nature’s best killer. That honor doesn’t even belong to the vertebrates! Viral organisms have held that particular trophy on their collective mantles for as long as they’ve been hopping rides in animals’ bodies only to return the favor by killing them.

To be fair, many sharks are efficient predators, but that doesn’t make them nature’s most efficient killers. Many sharks are intelligent and calculating — they stalk their prey in the same way a pride of lions might plan a hunt.

They wait patiently for the perfect moment to strike, which is why you often see sharks swimming peacefully around their potential “food.” Sharks that hunt their prey often rely on surprise and will abort their attempt if that advantage is lost.

Of course, this only applies to some shark species, and there are probably more than you might know. More than 500 species of shark have been identified, and some are more efficient at hunting than others. Many species are far less discerning and will attempt to eat anything they come across.

9 Sharks Are Maneaters

Sharks are scary because they look terrifying. Add to that the fact that they are often unseen when they attack people, and you have nothing short of terror on everyone’s minds when one is sighted. Because of this and movies that capitalize on fear, sharks have been labeled as “maneaters.”

The vast majority of sharks spend their entire lives without ever seeing a human. Think about it for a second — Earth’s oceans are enormous, and most people only venture into the waters along coastlines, leaving a massive space for sharks to swim without seeing people.

The vast majority of shark species are opportunistic feeders that primarily eat small fish and invertebrates. Only around 12 species have been involved in attacks on people. When it does happen, it’s usually due to the shark mistaking a human for something else.

Granted, when a shark bite does occur, it’s serious. Just a little chomp is enough to cause massive tissue damage, the mangling of limbs, and death if not treated right away. The seriousness of these incidents helps give rise to the “maneater” myth, but in the end, that’s all it is.

8 Sharks Are At The Top Of The Food Chain

Most people think of sharks as nature’s most efficient killing machines, but we’ve already dispelled that myth. Still, the myth prevails, leading many to assume that sharks are at the top of their respective food chain.

It makes sense when you think about it… what could possibly pose a threat to a shark? Technically, humans kill far more sharks than anything in the ocean, but we aren’t exactly members of their food chain. As it happens, while sharks don’t have to live in constant fear of many predators, they are hunted in their environment.

When most people picture the deadliest shark, they probably think of the Great White. After all, they can grow up to 23 feet (7 meters) and weigh 2.5+ tons or more. They can become prey to larger great whites, but the creature that hunts and eats them is the aptly named Killer Whale.

This behavior was first documented in 1997 when two Orcas attacked a Great White shark to consume its liver. Since that time, more attacks have been witnessed, proving there’s a predator the largest predatory sharks fear.

7 Sharks Can’t Get Cancer

Because cancer has long been one of humanity’s deadliest enemies, people have looked to other animals to try and find a means of fighting it. Over the years, this has manifested in many ways. The most perplexing is the belief that sharks are so evolved that they are somehow immune to cancer.

This is entirely false, as malignant tumors have been found in sharks since the first was identified in the late 19th century. It likely became popular because, while sharks can (and do) get cancer, it’s somewhat rare when compared to other animals. As a result, people have long believed that grinding up shark cartilage and consuming it will prevent/kill cancer (it doesn’t).

Another culprit for this myth is the 1992 bestselling book, Sharks Don’t Get Cancer: How Shark Cartilage Could Save Your Life. In the book, I. William Lane and Linda Comac explain that sharks rarely get cancer. The book promotes using their cartilage for health benefits.

It also endorsed a product from one of the author’s sons, eroding its credibility as legitimate scientific research. Regardless, the myth prevails despite the large body of scientific evidence proving otherwise.

6 Sharks Will Die If They Stop Swimming

There has long been a belief that sharks need to swim to live, which is associated with how sharks breathe. Like most fish, sharks breathe via gills, which extract oxygen from the water as it passes over them. Unlike most species of fish, sharks do this in a variety of ways.

Some species use ram ventilation, which works when they swim fast with their mouths open, forcing water to flow through their gills. Typically, when a shark is breathing in this manner, they swim faster than usual and are always moving.

Some sharks use buccal pumping, which works by drawing water into the mouth and over the gills, which they can do while remaining completely still. This has been observed in Bullhead and Nurse Sharks.

The Tiger shark has been known to switch between buccal pumping and ram ventilation, depending on their need. Some species lost the ability to buccal pump, including Great Whites and Mako Sharks. These “obligate ram ventilators” will indeed stop breathing if they don’t swim, so the myth isn’t true of nearly every species of shark but does apply to a few.

5 Sharks Can Detect A Single Drop Of Blood From Miles Away

You’ve probably heard this at some point in your life, and ever since, you’ve taken precautions to avoid the water with even a tiny cut. Many sharks are hunters, and they do have an acute sense of spell and a sensitive olfactory system, but it’s not a supernatural ability.

Sharks use their nostrils entirely for smelling since they can’t breathe through them. They are lined with incredibly sensitive cells capable of picking apart various chemicals interpreted as smells by the brain. While this translates into an accurate sense of smell, it doesn’t extend for miles in any direction.

Some sharks have been known to detect a low concentration of something at a few hundred meters, which is hardly a mile or more. Some species of sharks can detect specific compounds at 1 part per billion, which sounds impressive — and it is — but it amounts to about 1 drop in an average-size swimming pool.

Sharks can definitely pick apart a scent in a large body of water, but it’s limited far more than the myth allows. This ability isn’t restricted to predation either, as it comes in handy when detecting pheromones emitted during mating.

4 Sharks Can Swim Backward

For the vast majority of fish species, swimming backward is as simple as flicking the pectoral fins in the right direction. This makes it possible to quickly escape from danger, and most fish can do it, though not as well as they can swim forwards.

Because this isn’t much of a problem for most fish, it stands to reason that people would believe that sharks can swim backward. Oddly enough, sharks are among the minority of fish species that cannot swim backward, and it’s to do with several factors of their anatomy.

Sharks swim forward by moving their tails to push water around their fins, which they use to stabilize and steer their bodies. Unlike most fish, their pectoral fins don’t curve upwards, limiting their swimming to forward movement only. When a shark moves backward, it does so by stopping movement and letting gravity do the rest.

Moving backward can actually be harmful to sharks due to their need to move water over their gills to breathe. Backward movement can lead to suffocation in some species, so doing anything but swim forward isn’t an option.

3 Sharks Are Only Found In Saltwater

Ask just about anyone in the world what kind of water sharks call home, and they’ll describe oceans. This makes sense, seeing as most sharks are found in the world’s oceans, but there are some exceptions.

There are six species of River Sharks found in Southeast Asia, South Asia, New Guinea, and Australia. These sharks all fall under the genus Glyphis, and they all reside in freshwater for their entire lives. Unfortunately, most species of River Sharks are largely unknown to science.

This is due to severe population decline due to habitat degradation, making them some of the rarest sharks in the world. Little is known about their lifecycle and populations as a result of their diminishing numbers. Often, River Sharks are confused with another freshwater-loving species, the Bull Shark.

Bull Sharks spend most of their lives in freshwater, but they return to the ocean to mate. They travel the world’s rivers and have been found as far inland up the Mississippi River as Alton, Illinois, which is about 1,750 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. In 1972, one was found 2,500 miles up the Amazon River, so they do just fine in freshwater.

2 All Sharks Are Deadly To Humans

Many people around the world wrongly assume that sharks are maneating predators capable of causing severe harm or death. While it’s true that a shark bite is almost always a serious injury that can lead to death, the belief that all species of sharks are capable of causing harm to humans is simply false.

Only about a dozen species of sharks have ever been known to bite humans, and seeing as there are around 500 species known to science, that’s only about 2.4% of all sharks. That leaves hundreds of different species that are of no threat to people, and the variety of these animals is pretty amazing.

Some sharks, like the Caribbean Reef Shark, are dangerous to humans if they attack, but they rarely do. Still, you wouldn’t want to get bitten by one. Nurse sharks are well known for having no interest in people whatsoever, and while attacks are incredibly rare, disturbing them might cause a bite.

The largest shark and largest fish in the world, the Whale Shark, is of no danger to humans. They are filter feeders, so it has no interest in people at all. If you found yourself in its mouth, it would be almost as upset as you, but seeing as it lacks any teeth in its mouth and would spit you out, you’d walk away with the best fish story ever told.

1 Sharks Can “Go Rogue” And Hunt Only Humans

The term “rogue shark” is often used to describe a shark that stops hunting its usual prey and instead seeks out and subsists entirely on people. This is, of course, unnatural for all the reasons previously mentioned.

So-called “rogue sharks” are blamed for shark attacks on people, but the concept of a “rogue shark” is entirely without merit. Sharks don’t suddenly gain a taste for humans and seek them out. typically, when a shark bites someone, they realize it isn’t their typical prey and move on.

They rarely take a second bite, though it can sometimes happen. Ultimately, it’s easy to see that rogue sharks aren’t a real threat if you look at the number of annual shark attacks. Globally, 57 unprovoked shark attacks were recorded in 2020. Ten of those resulted in fatalities, and 33 occurred in the U.S.A.

That may seem like a lot, but the odds of a person being bitten by a shark are incredibly low. Your odds of being attacked by a shark are 1 in 3,748,067. You are more likely to be struck by lightning before winding up in a train accident and ultimately dying from fireworks long before succumbing to a shark attack.

Top 10 Fascinating Facts And Stories About Sharks

Ah, murderers. There’s just something so interesting about the worst people in history. We’re obsessed with what motivates them and how they work, especially with the weird little quirks that all the major ones seem to have.

There are calling cards left on the scene, cryptic notes to authorities, and others, but the best serial killer quirk is the trophies (and we’re talking about killers here, so best actually means worst). Whether to relive their crimes, prove them, or just to build a human skin suit, killers sometimes take from those they’ve killed—and some of what they take is insane. More insane than usual, even. This list ranks ten of the weirdest, wildest, or most gruesome trophies killers have ever harvested from their victims.

Related: 10 Creepy Photos Of People Unaware They Are With A Serial Killer

10 The Eyes: Charles Albright

The media has always had a habit of nicknaming every killer they possibly could, and if the killer has ever taken trophies, then there’s your name. That’s certainly true of our first entry, Charles Albright, known as “The Eyeball Killer.”

Albright spent most of his adult life hopping from one crime to another. Theft, illegal weapons, assault, fraud, and his transgressions only escalated. By the time he sexually molested a minor, it was clear that his mental state was degrading. He then moved on to murder, even mutilating the victim’s bodies. His trophies were their eyeballs, which authorities never found despite his arrest and conviction.

9 Camping Gear?: Ivan Milat

You may know Ivan Milat as the “Backpacker Murderer” or as “Australia’s worst serial killer,” but what you might not know is the unusual trophy collection he amassed from his seven victims.

Milat targeted backpackers, offering them rides and then driving them into the forest, where he shot and/or stabbed them. His victims were apparently on their way to or coming from a camping trip, as he chose to take their camping supplies as trophies. When police searched Milat’s home, they found, in their own words, an “Aladdin’s Cave” of camping gear. Sleeping bags, a portable stove, canteens—you name it. And, for some insane reason, Ivan Milat killed for it.

8 Their Baby: John Edward Robinson

Over his lifetime, John Edward Robinson earned no shortage of cruel accolades. He was a scam artist, embezzler, and forger, and his most famous title was “the Internet’s first serial killer” due to his habit of luring victims via chat rooms. Yet another dark deed of Robinson’s came in the form of one possession he stole from one of his victims: their four-month-old daughter.

Robinson met Lisa Stasi in 1985 while she was down on her luck and staying at a women’s shelter in Kansas City. Under a fake name and posing as someone more successful and less murder-prone, Robinson offered Stasi a job, a home, and a better life. Instead, Robinson killed Staci and stole her daughter. Stasi’s body was never found, but the child fared better, thankfully. Robinson only kept her for a short while before giving her to his brother and sister-in-law. Evidently, they were unaware of her kidnapping. They raised her like they would have their own daughter in the end.

7 “The Screaming Boy”: Chris Busch

This entry is a weird one because the trophy in question came only from a serial killer suspect, and therefore could be no trophy at all.

The identity of the Oakland County Child Killer, who killed at least four children in 1970s Michigan, was never conclusively determined. However, one of the suspects, Chris Busch, stood out, if only for the possible trophy. Busch allegedly committed suicide (which is debatable and worth looking into further), and at the scene, taped to the wall above his dead body, was a hand-drawn picture. It showed a young boy, seemingly screaming in pain, who bore a striking resemblance to one of the confirmed victims, a young boy named Mark Stebbins.

6 Bathtubs of Blood: Elizabeth Báthory

Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed was a Hungarian noblewoman whose misdeeds have become legends. Over the years, the stories of her cruel and cannibalistic acts have grown, to the point where she has been hypothesized to be a possible inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But there is very likely a true core to her legend. Elizabeth Báthory tortured and killed hundreds of young women. The real question is whether or not she kept containers of their blood for drinking and bathing.

Historians disagree on the legitimacy of those claims, citing them as either propaganda, fear-mongering, or just idle gossip. It is true that, as a child, Báthory’s doctors prescribed rubbing on and drinking healthy, young blood to treat her seizures. Combined with her targeting of healthy young virgin women and her extreme sadism, it seems possible that the blood remained a part of Báthory’s life through adulthood, too.

5 37 X’s Mark the Spot: Robert Hansen

How Robert Hansen murdered a possible 37 women sounds like it could only happen in a movie. After kidnapping and torturing his victims, Hansen would fly them out into the remote Alaska wilderness, release them into the frigid wilds, and hunt them for sport. The trophy he kept? A map, hidden behind his headboard, with little X’s on it everywhere he dumped one of their bodies.

The most chilling feature of the map is that Hansen had written 37 X’s on it, while only 17 of his victims have been confirmed. Some of the 17 were found at locations the X’s denoted, including bodies that were previously unknown as Hansen’s victims. This strongly points to the legitimacy of the map, then further suggesting that potentially 20 more of Hansen’s victims await discovery to this day.

4 Their Voice: Eddie Leonski

At first mention, it may seem like killer Eddie Leonski shouldn’t make this list. After all, after three murders, he never once left the scene with a trophy. Instead, Leonski earns his spot because he carried out every murder for the sole purpose of obtaining trophies—he simply failed every time. He failed because it was impossible to harvest the desperately desired trophies, namely women’s voices.

In 1942, while Leonski was an active service member in the U.S. Army during World War II, he strangled three women. From witness reports, it was clear that he had attempted to murder several others similarly. When picked out of a lineup by multiple women, Leonski confessed to his crimes. His reason? Like Ursula the Sea Witch, he was desperately jealous of women’s singing voices and only killed to “get at their voices” himself.

3 Feet, Socks, Shoes: Jerry Brudos

If Jerry Brudos were just into feet, he would be off this list and instead featured in “Top 10 Kinks that You Should Stop Shaming. Who Cares, Anyway? I Mean, Come On” (Name still in alpha). But Brudos loved feet too much. Far too much.

Brudos loved feet so much that he would murder women, cut off their feet, and keep the rotting appendages as models for his shoe collection—also partially taken from his victims. Though feet were by far Brudos’s biggest fetish, it’s worth noting that he also kept victims’ breasts to make plastic molds of them for use as paperweights.

2 Just Everything: David Parker Ray

Suspected of more than 60 murders, David Parker Ray, also known as the Toy-Box Killer, is one of history’s most prolific serial killers. If even half the allegations against him, many by his closest friends and accomplices, are true, then Ray was an abnormally twisted, wicked individual. As befitting such a rare beast, the trophies he took from his victims are horrifying, both in content and in quantity.

The FBI maintains a website that lists, with pictures, every trophy of Ray’s thought to have come from a murder victim. The many trophy pictures are heartbreaking especially knowing the inhuman amount of torture he subjected his victims to. Many are jewelry, but some are personal and intimate. Worst of all, some of them clearly came from young children. Scroll through the collection at your own risk.

1 The Dog: John George Haigh

You don’t get the nickname “The Acid Bath Murderer” because you’re a great guy. But there are even worse things than killing and dissolving people. Specifically, there is stealing someone’s dog, which is as bad as it gets. That’s why John George Haigh, The Acid Bath Murderer, makes it to the top of this list.

In a nutshell, Haigh’s original story revolves around him going to prison for fraud and realizing that the best crimes leave no witnesses or evidence. Hence, when he was released and returned to his life of crime, he started tying up loose ends and throwing them in vats of acid. However, his worst crime came after he murdered Archibald and Rose Henderson to steal their possessions and sell them off. Though he sold most of their estate, he decided to keep and raise their dog for some reason. That’s a tremendous insult to add to an already immense injury.

Some criminals are meticulous in their planning. They will stalk a victim and commit their nefarious deeds with a mind to how they will escape authorities and never be tied to the scene of the crime. There have been killers that actually shaved their bodies and wore clean suits ahead of time just so they would leave no evidence that they were involved. But for all the planning that some killers do ahead of time, it’s the stupid mistakes that they make afterwards that often end up being their downfall. 

10. Ted Bundy Stole a Car

During Ted Bundy’s reign of terror, the serial killer was responsible for at least 30 murders over a span of about 5 years. It’s very likely that he committed many other crimes that we’ll never know about. Bundy was known to be a charming man, and he was considered handsome as well. These were two traits that helped him gain the confidence of many of his victims. His M.O. was used as a part of the movie The Silence of the Lambs. He would approach his victims during the day, in public places, pretending to be disabled and in need of help. Seeing such a charming but helpless man lulled a lot of people into a false sense of safety. Then he would knock them unconscious and kidnap them before sexually assaulting and murdering them.

The full details of exactly what he did are widely available and also remarkably disturbing and gruesome. He had been a psychology student in University and was well-liked by other students and his professors.  He even got into law school in the early 1970s. It seems like the only reason he didn’t finish was that he was too busy committing murders. When authorities turned their eye to Bundy in 1975 after he was charged with assault and kidnapping, he left Colorado in favour of Florida and continued his crime spree. 

Bundy was initially caught because he was driving with no lights on in the early morning. When the police inspected his car, it was full of what we consider today to be a host of creepy items including a ski mask, an ice pick, and handcuffs. Unfortunately, all that they charged him with was kidnapping. He managed to escape from prison later, and then was caught again when he made an illegal turn in a stolen vehicle. Once again he managed to escape from prison, and once again he was caught in a stolen car.

Had he not chosen to steal a car for the second and third times he was caught, he might have gotten away with everything for an indefinite time.

9. Golden State Killer Left Old DNA

Tons of people get suckered into the allure of sites like Ancestry.com or 23andMe. Who wouldn’t be excited to find out that they are 11.6% Atlantean, 35.6% Scottish, and 0.4% French Canadian? If you’re a serial killer, however, then these online DNA registries could be your undoing.

Law enforcement use the site called GEDMatch to upload a DNA sample they had from the Golden State Killer left at a crime scene from the 1980s. that site is a free online database where anyone can post their genetic data that they received from a site like 23andMe or Ancestry.com. Most people use it to help find distant relatives they didn’t know about who also uploaded their DNA results. But the police used it to track down anyone who was genetically related to the Golden State killer, a serial killer who had been at large for decades. They ended up finding a few cousins.

Using the other information available to them, law enforcement was able to narrow down who the killer was based on approximate age and the location of the crimes. They subsequently caught and arrested Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. The former police officer had committed 13 murders, 50 rapes, and well over 100 burglaries between 1973 and 1986. 

The DNA that the killer has left at the scene was utterly useless to law enforcement before this. While it’s a great way to identify a suspect, you do need to match it to a suspect. Since the police had none, the DNA was like a fingerprint with no finger to match it to. But the killer’s family members had at some point in time had their DNA tested. Had it not been for the novelty of modern DNA testing, the killer might have never been caught.

8. Randy Kraft Drove Drunk

Randy Kraft was known as the Scorecard Killer among other colorful mantis the media gave him for his murder spree that lasted nearly a decade from the early ’70s into the early 1980s. He killed at least 16 young men, but it’s thought that’s the true number may get well over 50.

Kraft got the nickname Scorecard Killer after he was caught, and it was discovered that he had literally kept a kind of scorecard that was written in code referencing various aspects of his victims. Some of them included initials for the victims that he killed while others detailed the various ways he had mutilated their bodies.

Kraft had long been a suspect in the murders and had even been arrested before. Authorities were not able to make any charges stick, as there was little evidence tying him to the murders. In fact, when police did try to charge him with a murder, the Los Angeles District Attorney dismissed the request of the investigating officers because the coroner had concluded the particular victim in this case had died of accidental drowning and not murder. That was in 1975.

It would not be until 1983 after Kraft had murdered several more victims that the California Highway Patrol caught sight of him driving erratically down Interstate 5. After he performed an illegal lane change, the officers pulled him over on suspicion of drunk driving. They discovered that there was actually a dead body in the passenger seat at the time. Police uncovered a mountain of forensic evidence including blood from other victims, numerous Polaroids of victims, and the affirmation scorecard detailing his crimes.

7. Alexander Bychkov Robbed a Store

Russian serial killer Alexander Bychkov was convicted of murdering nine men. His victims were typically older, sometimes homeless men, and Bychkov is known to have cannibalized the victims.

Many of Bychkov’s crimes were committed in the same way. He would meet an older man at a bar who was either homeless or an alcoholic and invite them back to his place after a night of drinking. He would then kill them and dismember their bodies.

Bychkov caught a break in 2010 when police arrested another man for the crimes and managed to get a confession out of him. The man was mentally ill, and it’s believed the confession was coerced.

Two years later, Bychkov robbed a hardware store of several knives and about $300 worth of cash. After he was arrested, police searched his home and found a diary in which he details the life and murders. If not for the robbery, he might have been able to continue for quite a while.

6. Arthur Shawcross Returned to a Body to Have Lunch

Arthur Shawcross was known to the media as the Genesee River Killer. From 1972 until 1989, he is known to have killed at least 14 victims. He was drafted into the army to serve in Vietnam and used to boast about the horrible crimes he committed there, including beheadings and more, all of which turned out to be false since he was never in active combat.

Once he was out of the army his crime spree started with burglary and arson. He was sentenced to 22 months in prison and actually got out early after saving the life of a prison guard during a riot. The next year he killed his first victim,  a 10-year-old boy. Shortly thereafter he murdered his second victim, and eight-year-old girl and was arrested the very next day for the crime. Lawyers let him plead down to manslaughter for both murders. He was released after serving 14 years, deemed to be no longer dangerous.

In 1988, Shawcross killed again, and continued to do so for at least 11 victims. Police were able to catch him in 1990 when he was captured on camera from a surveillance helicopter parked near the body of his latest victim, eating lunch and pleasuring himself. Shawcross tried to plead insanity at his trial, but no one bought it. He was sentenced to 250 years and died in prison in 2008.

5. Jeffrey Dahmer Let His Final Would-Be Victim Use the Bathroom

One of the most famous and terrifying serial killers in modern memory, Jeffrey Dahmer’s downfall is that he decided to put some trust in one of his would-be victims. That misplaced trust saved the victim’s life, and who knows how many potential future victims as well.

From the late 70s into the early 1990s, Jeffrey Dahmer murdered, dismembered, and in some cases ate parts of 17 victims.  The full breadth of his crimes horrified the world and have been the subject of numerous documentaries and movies ever since.

Although Dahmer had experienced some near misses with law enforcement in the past, including one case in which a victim got away, and police actually brought the victim back to his home because he convinced the cops it was just a domestic dispute it wouldn’t be until 1991 when he made what ended up being a fatal mistake.

Dahmer had convinced a man named Tracy Edwards to come home with him. Once they were at Dahmer’s apartment, his intended victim was handcuffed and Dahmer explained that he wanted to take pictures of him and then eat his heart. Edwards assured Dahmer that he had no interest in running away from him and they could do whatever he wanted, but he wanted to go to the bathroom and maybe have a beer. Dahmer, for whatever reason, thought that was a good idea, so they went back to the living room together. Edwards proceeded to punch Dahmer in the face and run out the front door. 

Edwards returned to the apartment with police who discovered photographic evidence of Dahmer’s many crimes, and a severed head of the refrigerator. Dahmer ended up being sentenced to 16 life terms in prison, but only lasted a couple of years before he was murdered by other inmates in 1994. Had he not agreed to let Edwards go to the bathroom and had a beer, he might never have been caught.

4. Maury Travis Printed a Map

Maury Travis was a suspected serial killer. He was arrested for two murders and confessed to 17, although the true number is in dispute. Travis was caught after his local newspaper ran a story on the disappearance and murder of one victim which he had a problem with.

When police investigated Travis’s home, they found what was described as a torture chamber in the basement full of bondage equipment and other tools. They are also videotapes detailing his crimes. 

After the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote the article about one of his victims, Travis wrote them a letter in reply saying that he could show them where plenty more bodies were. He included a map in the letter that he printed from Expedia.com. Law enforcement was able to trace that map back to Travis’s computer and arrest him. He committed suicide in custody before he was able to stand trial.

3. Richard Kuklinski Bragged 

Some people are incapable of doing anything without telling other people about it. That’s kind of a big problem with social media. It was also an issue for Richard Kuklinski, serial killer and hitman.

Known as The Iceman, Kuklinski also had nicknames of the Devil Himself and One Man Army. Sounds like he was a scary guy, and he was convicted of five murders, though he is known to have committed numerous other crimes. Unfortunately for a Kuklinski, he just couldn’t keep his crimes to himself. 

An undercover federal agent managed to dupe Kuklinski into thinking he was a fellow criminal. The hitman spilled the beans on numerous crimes, detailing that he had laced hamburgers with cyanide and committed various other murders over the years, including how he got rid of the bodies afterwards. Lawyers tried to argue that Kuklinski was just blowing smoke when he made these statements and they weren’t real, but the problem was they matched up with real crimes. 

2. Neville Heath Signed a Hotel Registry

Leaving your ID at the scene of a crime is arguably one of the stupidest things you could do as a murderer,  possibly even more stupid would be signing your name at the scene because that actually takes extra effort to do. And that’s exactly what Neville Heath did.

Shortly after becoming engaged to a woman he just met, he hooked up with another woman and brought her back to his hotel room. Evidence discovered the next day suggested that he had tortured the woman before murdering her and leaving her in the room to be found by the house key for the next day. For whatever reason, however, he had signed the hotel registry with his real name when he checked in. 

In a baffling twist, after writing the police a letter saying that, sure it was his room but he let another guy use it, he then left town, checked into a different hotel using a fake name this time, and then murdered another woman the exact same way. He was found guilty at trial and executed by hanging in 1946. 

1. Henri Landru Bought One-Way Tickets

You can look at the way Henri Landru  was captured either as an example of the man’s over efficiency or his cheapest. In the early 1900s, Landru  was known to be a swindler of women. He would seduce lonely women out of their life savings and move on to someone else. It’s a con that still goes on today, but Landru took it a step further when he started committing murders.

Most of his victims were widows. Landru would meet them in his capacity as a furniture seller. After the women lost their husbands, they would come to him and attempt to sell some of their possessions. He would seduce them with promises that he could invest the little money they had,  before stealing it and disappearing.

He later upped his game by claiming that he was a wealthy widower in search of a woman who had also been widowed. He met numerous women this way, and while using numerous aliases he managed to convince these women to estrange themselves from their families to be with him and they were never seen again. This happened over and over until some families began to look into the disappearances of their loved ones.

Police were unable to find bodies when they began to investigate Landru,  but the man had a bad habit of keeping track of his finances in detail. This included the times that he would purchase train tickets for himself and his would-be brides. The problem was that he purchased round tickets for himself and one-way tickets for them. Not finding remains on the property of his home, neighbors pointed out that they had more than once seen thick black smoke coming from the chimney. When police searched his massive cast iron stove, they found human remains in the ashes.

As bizarre as it may seem, a number of women have married serial killers. According to psychologists, some wed such murderers due to a sexual paraphilia known as hybristophilia. Professor John Money, a sexologist, explains that such wives are sexually aroused at being with a person who’s been convicted of having “committed an outrage or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery.”

While this paraphilia may account for some such relationships, other psychologists, authors of books about such women, and serial killers’ own wives offer additional explanations that are also insightful, reasonable, convincing, and unusual. Let’s examine 10 reasons women marry serial killers.

Related: 10 Deadliest Serial Killer Couples By Kill Count

10 Vicarious Celebrity

The title of Denise Mina’s online article asks, “Why are women drawn to men behind bars?” It is not easy to date prisoners, she writes. Not only might a woman have to exchange letters with several, or even many, prisoners before making “a sustainable connection” with one of them, but she must also make a “considerable effort to meet” him since he resides “in [a] secure containment” facility. Despite such obstacles, she persists. Why?

Simply put, one answer to this question, Mina suggests, is that a serial killer’s notoriety is perceived as glamorous. By being married to him, a woman may view herself as having achieved “vicarious celebrity.” Some serial killers, such as Richard Ramirez and Ted Bundy, even had groupies, but only one woman could claim such a man as her husband. The bride of a serial killer is apt to get a lot of attention.^[1]

9 Fantasy of Future Bliss

Sheila Isenberg, author of Women Who Love Men Who Kill, would agree with Mina. One reason that women marry serial killers is to garner attention for themselves. However, hope motivates other women. They endure the hardships presented by having a relationship with a man behind bars because they envision a future with him.

In this image, they feel that he will be able to devote himself to her when he is freed from prison, and together, they can live happily ever after. This fantasy of future bliss, in which the lovers “will begin to share a life of unending romance,” is all but impossible, Isenberg points out since such criminals are seldom released.^[2]

8 Raising Public Awareness

For some women who marry serial killers, their decision has nothing to do with the desire to enjoy “vicarious celebrity” or a fantasy of future bliss. Public defender and mitigation specialist Rosalie Martinez is one of them.

As Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D., points out in her online article “Women Who Love Serial Killers,” Oscar Ray Bolin, a former trucker, had been convicted 10 times for raping and killing three women in Florida, but his convictions had been overturned on technicalities: “errors” had been made in the proceedings of his trial.

Rosalie Martinez believed in the innocence of the man she loved so much that, in 1995, she left her husband, with whom she had four children, and married Bolin “over the phone.” Their marriage, she believed, would put a spotlight on Bolin’s “plight.” Despite Martinez’s tactic, Bolin was again convicted in 2012 and “received a life sentence on top of two death sentences.”^[3]

7 Convenience

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

As Ramsland observes, in addition to raising public awareness, the wives of serial killers have provided several other reasons for marrying their murderous spouses. One of the motives such women identify is convenience. By marrying a criminal who has been sentenced to life in prison, a woman can enjoy “the perfect boyfriend,” one who thinks about her often and never strays.

She can tell her friends that she is loved while being free of “the day-to-day issues involved in such relationships,” including the mundane tasks of keeping house. At the same time, she is not accountable to him. She has the “perfect boyfriend,” and “she can keep the fantasy charged up for a long time.”^[4]

6 To Change Him

One type of woman marries a serial killer because she thinks she can change him. Such a woman believes that her intended is simply misunderstood, explains Pat Brown, author of Killing for Sport. This woman believes that her beloved is also vulnerable and has “suffered terrible abuse.”

She is the type, Brown elaborates, who willingly stands by her man, refusing to leave him, even if he beats her regularly, hopeful that, by doing so, she can eventually “save him from himself.” In marrying a serial killer, the author points out, this type of woman “is safer than the battered woman she most likely would be [if her husband wasn’t serving a life sentence] because…behind bars…he can’t knock her around.”^[5]

5 Nurture

Another component of such a woman’s seeking to change a serial killer is the fact that, by doing so, she will assume control of him. As R.J. Parker declares in Serial Killer Groupies, this type of woman believes that if she “can make him fall in love with [her, she will] ultimately gain control.”

Other women, however, are motivated by their desire to “nurture” a serial killer, Parker explains. Such women perceive the child the killer once was and desire to nurture him. This is one of the most frequent answers women give for dating such murderers. They believe that if they can somehow provide the love and care he missed out on as a boy, they can rid the killer’s “cruel and harmful nature, making him amicable again”^[6]

4 Sympathy

Tracey Bottomley of West Yorkshire, UK, was aware, she said, that her fiancé, American serial killer Ernest Otto Smith, might one day kill her, but marrying him would be worth it, she insisted, since death eventually claims us all, anyway. “I don’t mind the fact,” she made it clear, “it could be at the hands of him.” She claimed she loves Smith, whom she’d met in 2018 through a prison pen pal program.

Her sympathy for the killer seems to be the basis for her love. Her “parallel experiences with trauma and abuse,” like that which Smith suffered, bonded their relationship, writes reporter Hannah Sparks. As Bottomley herself put it, the child abuse her husband suffered as a boy “resonated with me.” Smith, a traditional fiancé, insisted on buying their wedding bands, having arranged for his son, who manages Smith’s bank accounts, to send her the funds for the purchases.^[7]

3 Sadomasochistic Passion

Their mutual passion for sadomasochism created a powerful bond between Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, who met at a pet convention when they were 17 and 23, respectively. Homolka, the submissive partner to the dominant Bernardo, promised in her wedding vows to “love, honor, and obey” him when they married, not as husband and wife, but as “man and wife,” a deliberate phrasing intended to indicate Bernardo’s dominant role in their marriage.

Homolka took her wedding vows seriously, agreeing not only to procure sexual victims for her husband but also to join him in kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and murdering their victims, one of whom was Homolka’s own younger sister. Finally, the couple separated in 1993, shortly before her ex-husband was identified as the Scarborough Rapist.

Following their conviction, Bernardo was sentenced to life. Thanks to a plea deal requiring her to testify against him, Homolka received a 12-year sentence with eligibility for parole after three years. She was released from prison in 2005 and now lives under an assumed name.^[8]

2 Low Self-Esteem

“An unrepentant cannibal,” Arthur Shawcross says he was inspired by the atrocities he witnessed during his stint of duty in Vietnam. The fact that he was born with an extra Y-chromosome might have added to his aggressive nature. However, this abnormality doesn’t seem to explain his belief that he was channeling both his late mother’s spirit and that “of a thirteenth-century cannibal” named Ariemes. Shawcross believed Ariemes had taken possession of his body and “drove him to rape, murder, and cannibalism.”

His deeds didn’t dissuade his long-time sweetheart, Clara Neal, whom he’d met during an adulterous liaison, from marrying him, even though Shawcross was already married at the time. Although the ceremony was a simple affair, conducted “in the prison’s visiting room,” it satisfied Neal, who described it as “nice.”

Her further comment suggests that, in addition to her love for Shawcross, her low self-esteem factored into why she’d married the cannibalistic serial killer following the death of Shawcross’s wife in 1997. “It took 10 years to make the grade, but I finally made it,” she said. She seems to have seen herself as inferior to Shawcross, as low-grade. She needed a lot of improvement, so much that it took a decade to make the grade to the extent that she would be fit enough to become his fiancée. She hadn’t been good enough for Shawcross, not, at least, according to her own measure of her value, her self-esteem.^[9]

1 Partnership, Sex, Power, and the Need to Please

Another reason women marry serial killers is to institute a partnership involving both crime and romance, or “business and pleasure,” as Dirk C. Gibson puts it in his book Serial Killers Around the World. He was referring to David and Catherine Birnie, a common-law husband and wife serial killer team. Friends—and some say—lovers since childhood, they “reunited” in 1985, Gibson notes. Catherine subsequently abandoned her husband and six children in favor of David, officially taking David’s last name as her own.

Their crimes, which included abduction, kidnapping, rape, “days of sexual assault,” and murder, were motivated almost entirely by David’s sex drive and emotional control of Catherine. She was entirely dependent on him, although they did try their hand (unsuccessfully) at safecracking on one occasion.

Gibson concludes his sketch of the killers by providing Dr. Giarrattano’s and Gibson’s own assessment of David’s motives for the murders and Catherine’s attorney’s opinion of his client’s motive. David’s motive, Giarrattano says, was “sexual” (to which Gibson adds and perhaps his need to exercise power), while Catherine’s lawyer declared that hers was her eagerness to please David.^[10]